Sunday, 6 January 2013

6th January

In the world of cricket things are pretty much going to
script at the moment. Australia have
just completed a 3-0 home win over a woeful Sri Lankan side. SL have some fantastic batsmen but sadly
their bowlers simply aren’t good enough to take 20 wickets outside the sub
continent. Australia didn’t look
impressive either, having to rely on recalling the likes of Phil Hughes and
Mitchell Johnson who rarely look test class for more than one match in any
series. The gentleman Mike Hussey has
just retired and this will leave a massive hole in their batting line up.

Over in South Africa the hosts battered a limp New Zealand
side by an innings in under three days.
This was inevitable after the first session of the match when the
tourists were bowled out for a pathetic 45.
You have to back a home clean sweep here too but NZ hardly help themselves
with a situation which sees their best batsman remaining at home.

Pakistan have just beaten India 2-1 in an ODI series, they
actually should have won all three matches but threw the third away today. England return to India soon for an ODI series
which should they win will see them climb to the outright top of the
rankings. Currently we are tied with SA
on 121 points. It’s the same two teams at
the top of the test rankings but here SA have a deserved 5 point lead. Over the next couple of months England will
be touring New Zealand and the Aussies head for India, should be interesting
times ahead.

“Glue” by Irvine Welsh is set in Edinburgh and charts the
lives of four boys growing to adulthood and beyond. It visits the four in snapshots of the
various decades from the 70’s through to the early 2000’s, joining them at
character forming and life changing junctions in the lives of one or more. We are introduced to many new faces in the familiar
Edinburgh of Welsh’s creation and we warmly greet many old friends from other
favourite novels. Some of the “Glue”
characters return in later novels too.
This book will educate, inform and entertain. In places you will laugh out loud but in
others you will be shocked, it is an Irvine Welsh book after all. Most of all, this book will move you. You don’t have to be Scottish, if you’re in
your forties and grew up in Britain you will know the world Welsh writes about
and you will ‘know’ some of the characters.
Glue was as good on the second read as it was a decade ago, the first
time around.

Stuck for something to read I picked an unread copy of “Tom
Jones” by Henry Fielding of my shelf.
Apparently it’s a classic so what the hell, I’ll give it a go. It was first published in 1749 which
unfortunately makes it an effort to read and the author’s habit of talking to
the reader directly causes more annoyance and adds extra, unnecessary
pages. After getting about 100 pages in
I found I didn’t really care about any of the characters involved and I wasn’t
enjoying the read. Normally I stubbornly
pursue a book to its end anyway but as I was only about 1/8th my way
through the book I made the humane decision to stop. I felt that to continue would be a total
waste of my time. I can’t remember if I’ve
given up on any other books before, I’m sure I have but can’t recall. This must make Tom Jones a candidate for the
worst book I’ve ever read?

I once read “Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky and this
was a similar experience to Tom Jones except I managed to finish the
novel. It was a far easier read but the
subject was bloody depressing and as a reader I already knew which way things
were going to go. However I did manage
to finish the book which disqualifies it from worst book. On reflection I remember reading some trashy
horror novel by Shaun Hutson (I think?).
I finished this book too but it was so bad I binned another book by the
same author that I had lined up next.